Are you suffering from “election fraud” fatigue like I am? Are you eying the ladder in the carport and fantasizing about climbing up onto the roof of your house and doing a perfect swan dive onto the pavement below like I am? What could the reason possibly be? Could it be the long and endless repetition of unproven lies and conspiracy theories regarding the presidential election of 2020 perhaps? Do you think that these claims of fraud and election theft pertain only to the 2020 presidential campaign or are merely the harmless ravings of a sore loser? Surely there is clear and irrefutable proof that something of this magnitude, which shakes our democratic values to its core by the way, has been produced right? No true patriot would undermine the foundations of the greatest country on earth just to soothe their bruised ego, would they? Don’t be too sure about that! Let’s take a deeper dive into all this. There is a rich history of false election claims by Trump.
Here is the history of Trump and his false election claims:
Donald Trump has made unfounded and false claims of rigged elections and voter fraud since 2012! Does that surprise you? On election night after Romney lost to Obama, Trump claimed that the election was a “total sham”, “a travesty” and oh by the way this country is “not a democracy”. (moderator’s privilege here: Trump tried very hard to make sure that the U.S. was not a democracy by attempting to overturn the 2020 election). Trump went on to urge people “fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice,” as well as “the world is laughing at us” without a shred of proof!
Next up: the 2016 Republican primary elections.
Now we have the 2016 primaries. After Trump lost to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus, Trump tweeted: “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!” Trump also tweeted: “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.”
Moving on to the 2016 general election.
Right before the 2016 general election Trump famously tweeted “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD,”. After losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes, Trump lied about that too. Trump claimed that he had won the popular vote! “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,”. Again, without a whiff of evidence, just like the 2020 election cycle.
Now fast forward to the 2020 election.
Before a single ballot is cast, Trump claims “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged”. This was at a Wisconsin rally 10 weeks before the election. As the votes were being counted Trump tweets “They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!’ Finally, Trump attacks mail-in voting. “I’ve been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It’s — it’s really destroyed our system. It’s a corrupt system. And it makes people corrupt even if they aren’t by nature, but they become corrupt; it’s too easy. They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait and then they find them,”. Hmmmmm, quite the record of false election fraud claims!
And well, there you have it. That’s why we have election fraud fatigue! It’s because Trump has been attacking open and fair elections for decades. While the claims may be preposterous and unsupported by facts, they are extremely dangerous. Each claim threatens our democracy’s core values. The principal that every vote counts is critical to our having faith in this democracy. This is how a democracy dies! Casting doubts upon our elections. Attacking the press by labeling it “the enemy of the people”. Discrediting entire blocks of voters because they don’t look like you or vote for you. Trump constantly aligned himself with Stalin, Kim Jong Un, Mohammed bin Salman, Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and Ji Jinping. All of them dictators. All of them haters of democracy. All of them friends of Donald Trump.